Give, Get, Go: SEO Charity Contest Winners Announced

It's that time again, people. Bruce Clay, Inc. is announcing the
winner of February's Give, Get, Go SEO Charity Contest. We've gone
through your entries on how you plan to conduct an organic search
optimization campaign of a non-profit organization's Web site. In
exchange for donating three months of time to working with the
non-profit of their choice, the winner is receiving a ticket to the
Search Engine Strategies NYC Conference and Expo and free pass to Bruce
Clay's SEO Training Course and Advanced Certification Course. That's a
prize package worth over $4800 in search marketing education and
training.

The non-profit had to be a community organization with an existing
Web site that could benefit from organic search engine optimization. The
winning search marketer submitted an application that best documented
what the site was doing well, where it could improve, and had a clear
and organized action plan.

We received some great entries with plans for very worthy non-profit
organizations. So along with awarding the grand prize, we're encouraging
the runner-up and two honorable mention entries to follow through with
their invaluable campaigns with some exciting rewards. The runner up
will receive a free one-year subscription to our SEO ToolSet and a free
pass to our SEO Training Course and Advanced Certification Course to be
held April 7-11. Those receiving honorable mention get a free one-year
subscription to our SEO Tool Set.

Congratulations to all our winners. Below you'll find a quick summary
of Ryan and Margaret's selected non-profits and their plan for action.

Winner: Ryan Freeman/The Elisha Foundation

Ryan selected The Elisha Foundation, a resource for families caring
for people with special needs. Through family retreats and access to
professionals and education specialists, the foundation supports the
physical, emotional and spiritual needs of every member of these
families.

The organization was formed in 2004 and the purpose of the Web site
is to raise awareness of their activities and resources. The site allows
families who could benefit from the services of The Elisha Foundation
to learn about the organization and get involved in the activities. It
also provides people interested in assisting the foundation an easy
means through which to donate, volunteer and stay up to date.

The site was recently redesigned for a slick new look, but Ryan's
technical review of the site uncovered many areas that when improved
upon will have a great impact on the site's rankings. Some of the
problems he ran into can be solved with 301 redirects, such as the fact
that there are multiple domains serving identical copies of the homepage
(including both non-www and www domains) and that the redesign changed
the CMS, resulting in a new URL structure that has left old URLs hanging
around.

He also found areas with text displayed in images and images that
could benefit from ALT and Title attributes, links that could use Title
attributes, and Page Titles that need keywords. Ryan plans to add Meta
Description and Keyword tags to each page, a robots.txt, and XML
Sitemap, register with Google Webmaster Tools, and change the archive
format from a date system to a siloed keyword system.

As for changes to the site's content, Ryan's top priority is moving
the video off the homepage and adding an introduction to the
organization under an <H1> header. He also wants to create a
social network for families to connect and maintain friendships and add a
product and service reviews section for first-hand recommendations
about the products, equipment, toys and services used by families caring
for special needs children and adults. Finally he plans to alter the
anchor text of links and include an <H2> header for upcoming
events on the home page.

Ryan's plans for increasing links and awareness through off-page
factors include becoming involved in forums and online communities,
launching a link building campaign, getting prominent bloggers and
authors interested in the cause to promote the work of the foundation,
and encouraging those already involved to post photos and videos from
the retreat on sites like Flickr and YouTube.

We think this is a great plan that outlines many effective SEO
tactics, from the major to the minutia. While it's a pretty in-depth
proposal, Ryan has volunteered to dedicate the next 12 months of his
time to this SEO campaign. We are confident that as he puts his plan in
action The Elisha Foundation will see the benefit of his efforts, and we
can't wait to see what comes of his hard work.

Runner-up: Margaret Butler/International Rett Syndrome Foundation

Our runner-up Margaret offered a compelling SEO campaign plan to
support a cause that she cares about deeply. A little known but severely
debilitating disorder, Rett Syndrome affects an estimated one in every
10,000-20,000 females, including her two-year-old granddaughter,
Brooklyn Ashleigh Butler.

The International Rett Syndrome Foundation is dedicated to increasing
awareness of the disorder, promoting research, providing an online
community for those affected by the disorder and their families, and
fundraising. The Web site was originally launched in 1999 under the
ownership of the International Rett Syndrome Association, but was
redesigned and relaunched last month with the merger of IRSA and the
Rett Syndrome Research Foundation. With the great ranking potential of
the old domain and the organization's supportive leadership on her side,
we're confident that this campaign will see success.

For her organic SEO campaign, Margaret plans to first focus on
externalizing the CSS and JavaScript and implementing keywords on
individual pages based on her keyword research. She also plans to
optimize the Meta tags and launch a link building campaign. As the cause
holds special significance to her, she plans to make the project an
ongoing commitment boosted through the skills she learns at the Bruce
Clay training courses.

Along with being an active fundraiser and promoter for IRSF, Margaret
is also a Web designer and "rookie SEO and SEM professional" with an
insatiable appetite for industry knowledge. We're thrilled to be able to
offer her a seat at our SEO Training Course and Advanced Certification
Course because we know that her efforts will support a great
organization.

All our winners submitted well thought out plans for comprehensive
organic SEO campaigns. We hope that as we present these charity contests
in the future we will continue to see such a high level of energy and
dedication to both SEO and non-profit groups. Congratulations again to
our winners, and if you didn't make it to the podium this time around we
encourage you to apply next time the Bruce Clay, Inc. Give, Get, Go SEO
Charity Contest comes around.

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